Studio Notes - September 2023
I laughed out loud when I was trying to figure out if I could park here. What day is it? What time is it? Ah, life.
Summer has been a mixed bag this year in Maine, as it seems to have been everywhere. The plants and animals seem to be doing just fine in adjusting to more rain, less sun, and erratic temperatures. I hope to have been as gracious as they have been. But beneath the mild grumbling I feel a current of fear that requires our attention and action. We are in new and troubling times.
To do:
Go to a live performance. Theater. Symphony. Rock concert. Musical. A local bar with a guy playing the guitar. A recital at the local elementary school. Anything that includes people of any age doing their best to express life through words or melodies or movement in the same room with you, the audience. This summer, Kirby and I have attended Maine State Music Theater, Opera Maine, the Portland Symphony Orchestra, a bar in the lobby of a hotel in Moncton, New Brunswick and artist’s talks (not exactly a performance but still counts) and have found a joy and uplift that I doubted could be so easily attained these days. Really. It works.
To see:
A website with interviews and classes, Fibre Arts Take Two, comes to the world from Australia. Angela Truscott is the power behind the endeavor and is a gracious host and beautiful designer of images, conversation and learning. I was honored to be interviewed a week or so ago on their Friday Feature Artist series. Over a hundred interviews are available on their YouTube channel, after having been streamed live around the world. (7:00 EDT Friday evenings in the US.) The goal is learning, sharing and community building. It succeeds beautifully.
To read:
I have always appreciated David Brooks, even though he is positioned as the conservative opposite the liberal opinion which I normally wholeheartedly share. As his commentary has shifted from a political to a humanist view, I have liked him even more. This is a recent New York Time’s column that I found enlightening. Isn’t it rewarding to read something that gives form to what one has been inchoately thinking?
Coming up
I’ll be teaching a class in October for the Missouri Fiber Artist Association with Jo Stealey and am hoping to coordinate with Fibre Arts Take Two for a class next year. A show scheduled for next fall with Tom Hall, Maine painter and Thaddeus Holownia, Canadian photographer, will keep me quite busy. All good. Still grateful.
It’s an effort not to sound a little negative and preachy these days. But amidst the concerns there are so many joys and delights for the having. I’m doing my best and hope that you are too.
All best,
Lissa